by Pat Barker
Most of the men had had enough to eat by now; they were just picking at the meat or mopping up the juices with hunks of bread. Here, on the top table, Pyrrhus was talking about the attempt to bury Priam. Whoever had done this had been interrupted before he could finish the job, Pyrrhus said. So, the body had been dug up and guards posted to make sure it didn’t happen again. Everybody at the top table knew this already. This explanation was directed at Calchas, who seemed bewildered by the turn the conversation was taking. I could see he was already deeply offended by his reception. He’d not been asked to lead the company in prayer, nor to pour a libation to the gods. Now, Pyrrhus was needling him; there was real aggression in his manner and no sign at all of respect.
I filled their cups—silently, invisibly—listening. And suddenly, looking down the hall, I thought: I’ve missed this!
As the eating ended, the singing began. Pyrrhus had secured the services of a notable bard, of whom there were several in the camp. The bard sang alone, although there were choruses in which the men could join. Every single song was about Achilles, his short life and glorious death, his courage, his beauty, his frequent, terrifying rages. I remember one of the songs was called simply “Rage.” I happened to be standing in the shadows at the side of the top table, so I could see Pyrrhus’s face. It must have been a source of pride to him to hear his father’s achievements extolled in words and music—and these were some of the best words and greatest music I’d ever heard, but looking at him I did wonder whether there were other, more painful, emotions at work. In some parts of the camp—and not just in the Myrmidon compound—Achilles was worshipped as a god. There must have been times when Pyrrhus felt like a weedy little sapling struggling to survive in the shadow of a great oak. Did he ever doubt himself? I think he must have done.
The last song faded into silence. The men were on their feet, clapping, banging the tables, shouting their appreciation, while the singer took his seat at the top table and accepted a cup of wine.
Not long afterwards, Alcimus suggested to Pyrrhus that it was time for Andromache and me to withdraw. Pyrrhus looked blank for a moment, but then nodded. We retreated to the small room—the “cupboard”—and sat on the bed where we ate hunks of bread and some very dry figs. Andromache kept taking deep breaths as if she’d been half suffocated up till then.
“Cheer up,” I said, as I got up to go. “With any luck, he’ll pass out.”
I crossed the yard to Alcimus’s hut, but I wasn’t ready to go to sleep yet. So I brought out a chair and set it down in the most sheltered part of the veranda. The hall was in uproar. It was always noisy towards the end of the evening, before the men spilled out in search of other forms of fun, but there weren’t usually so many raised voices. I wondered if I ought to go across to the women’s hut and warn Amina about the guards, but the girls would have settled down for the night, and anyway, I couldn’t believe she’d take such an insane risk. Not a second time. We can all be brave once.
My head was buzzing with the sights and sounds of dinner, snippets of overheard conversation that meant nothing in themselves but together formed a pattern. Pyrrhus, the young men from Skyros whom he couldn’t, or wouldn’t, control. Alcimus’s watchful face as he looked up and down the tables, doing for Pyrrhus exactly what Patroclus used to do for Achilles—heading off trouble. But Patroclus had enjoyed Achilles’s total trust, whereas I suspected Pyrrhus secretly resented Alcimus, who’d fought beside his father; who’d known the man he would never know. I understood the pressures Alcimus was under much better now.
The uproar was getting louder, though I couldn’t hear what they were shouting. We were in for a rowdy night. I stood up and was about to go inside when there was a commotion at the entrance to the hall and Pyrrhus appeared on the veranda with Calchas, the two of them obviously arguing. The quarrel seemed to be about Apollo and the part Pyrrhus believed the god had played in Achilles’s death. It was self-evident, he said, that no mortal man could have destroyed Achilles—it had to be the work of a god and everybody knew Apollo hated Achilles, who’d rivalled him in strength and beauty. From Calchas’s point of view, Pyrrhus was spewing out blasphemies. He raised his hand, to protest, I thought, but perhaps Pyrrhus saw it as a threat. At any rate, he caught Calchas by the wrist and shoved him violently towards the steps. I don’t think he meant to do him harm, but unfortunately, Calchas caught his foot in the hem of his robe and fell headlong down the steps onto the yard, where he lay spread-eagled, every bit of breath knocked out of him.
After a few seconds, Calchas raised his head. Blood was oozing from a deep cut on his cheekbone, turning the white paint to a pink mess. Pyrrhus gaped at him, at first in horror, but then burst out laughing. He might have left it there—and that would have been bad enough—but the young men from Skyros came crowding through the door behind him, laughing and egging him on. By now, Calchas had managed to get himself up onto all fours. Confronted by that tempting backside, Pyrrhus simply couldn’t resist. He leapt down the steps, planted his foot squarely on Calchas’s arse and knocked him flat again, before turning to his followers, yelling and punching the air. They, of course, clapped him on the back, ruffled his hair and pulled him back into the hall, shouting at the women to bring more wine.
My first impulse was to rush across to help, but instead I retreated further into the shadows, watching, as Automedon lifted Calchas to his feet and dusted him down. Often, those who witness a man’s humiliation are resented almost as much as the person who inflicts it—and I had no desire to make an enemy of Calchas. Perhaps, as everybody said, he was out of favour with Agamemnon, but he was still a clever and powerful man. So, I looked on as Automedon supported him as he hobbled a few trial steps. I knew Automedon was a devoutly religious man and he’d deplore the insult he’d just witnessed. Some of the men around the campfires sniggered or openly jeered as the priest limped past. It wasn’t even that they disliked Calchas; they were bullies, ready to turn on anybody they perceived to be weak, like weasels sniffing blood. Others, though, were obviously appalled. One or two even made the sign against the evil eye as Calchas, with his arm draped across Automedon’s shoulders, shuffled slowly to the gate.
I think Automedon must have helped the priest all the way home because although I lingered on the veranda for a while, I didn’t see him return.
18
The day following that incident, Pyrrhus ordered the men to muster in the yard and spoke to them from the veranda steps. It was an ill-judged performance. After telling them that an attempt had been made to bury Priam (they knew) he went on to say that anybody who tried that again would face the death penalty. He concluded by haranguing them on the subject of loyalty, though the Myrmidons were the most fiercely loyal to their leaders of any contingent. They raised a cheer for him at the end, but it was muted, and as the crowd dispersed, I saw glances being exchanged, though nothing was said.
I kept busy; the hut had never been so clean. But as soon as I sat down and closed my eyes, my mind again filled with images, like the tide tumbling into a rock pool: Amina pinning a wreath of purple daisies in Andromache’s hair; Pyrrhus’s flushed face and braying laugh; Calchas spread-eagled in the dust. One thing I did—and this may strike some people as treacherous—I asked Alcimus to get the guards to patrol the area around the women’s hut. Whether he remembered to tell them or not, I don’t know. Later that evening, I went with Andromache to the hall where we served wine at dinner, and the atmosphere there was tense.
Somehow Pyrrhus’s speech seemed to have increased the bad feeling that had developed between the young men he’d brought with him from Skyros and the Myrmidons, a division that Pyrrhus appeared to encourage. I had no sense that these young men were his friends—I’m not sure Pyrrhus had any friends—but he seemed to feel a need to ingratiate himself with them. Towards the end of the evening, a fight broke out between one of the Skyros ringleaders and an older Myrmidon. He wasn’t generally know
n as a quarrelsome man; he’d simply had enough. Alcimus intervened, followed by Automedon, but Pyrrhus gave them absolutely no support. If anything, he was undermining their authority, even though his own position depended on their ability to control his men. The meal ended with the lads from Skyros jumping on the tables in what amounted to a victory dance, applauded loudly by Pyrrhus. I had to keep reminding myself he was only sixteen.
That night, I slept badly, jerking awake long before dawn and staring into the darkness, knowing that a new sound had woken me. I sifted through the various noises the wind was making: it was running through its usual repertoire of moans, groans, sobs and whistles. The cradle at the foot of my bed creaked. Nothing new in any of that, but then it came again: an urgent hiss from the other side of the wall. Somebody determined to wake me, but not wanting to attract attention by banging on the door. I put my lips to a gap between the planks and asked: “Who is it?”
“Maire.”
I was so drugged with sleep it took me a moment to bring her face to mind. She was the heavy, lumpen girl whose eyebrows met in the middle, who was always shrouded in a loose black robe—even inside the hut. Excessively modest; not even Amina went as far as that.
“What is it?”
“Amina’s gone.”
“Gone? What do you mean—gone?”
But I knew what she meant. Without waiting for an answer, I grabbed my mantle and felt my way along the passage. She was turning the corner of the hut as I opened the door, her pale moon-face looming out of the blackness. “You go back,” I said. “I’ll go and look for her.”
She nodded and was about to set off, but I caught her arm. “How long’s she been gone?”
“I don’t know—we were all asleep.”
“All right, you go back now. Tell them not to worry.”
How much did the others know? One of my fears was that Amina was capable of dragging the other girls into her crazy crusade, though I didn’t think she would. She was too proud of her isolation, her solitary, joyless rectitude. She’d be in no hurry to share the credit for the risk she was taking, though as I left the hut, part of me was still thinking: No, she won’t do it. Not now, not with guards posted near the body, and Pyrrhus hell-bent on finding the culprit. She must have heard his speech; everybody in the compound had heard it. But there was another possibility—that she’d simply run away. Perhaps I might even—inadvertently—have encouraged her. She’d seen how much food there was in the abandoned Trojan kitchen gardens. She might think she could hide there, though what future would there be in that? With marauding crows, feasting flies, burnt-out houses, ruined temples—winter just round the corner? For months, at least, she’d be facing total isolation—and, in the end, vegetables rot in the ground, fruit on the trees. The supply of food that now looked so plentiful would rapidly run out.
I imagined her running across the battlefield, not because I thought she had, but because I knew she hadn’t, and the alternative was so much worse that I couldn’t bear to contemplate it. What I actually thought was evident in the movement of my feet, which were taking me to the stable yard. My mantle was made of blue wool, a blue so dark it could easily be mistaken for black, and I’d wound it tight round my head so that everything was covered except my eyes. I crept along the side of one hut, waited until I was sure I wasn’t being observed, and then dashed across the open space into the shadow of the next. Through the wooden walls, I heard groans, murmurs, now and then a cry. Very few of the men in the camp slept well. At night, in the dark, memories of what had happened inside Troy were not so easily erased. I peered ahead. Either my eyes were becoming accustomed to the dark or it was just beginning to get light. There wasn’t much time.
Torches were burning in the stable yard, their lights wavering as they always seem to do in a high wind. I had to be careful, because I knew a boy-groom slept in the tack room at the far end, from which he sometimes emerged, slack-mouthed and vacant-eyed, with bits of straw stuck in his hair. I hesitated and the horses, sensing the presence of a stranger, began to weave from side to side. They were restless at the best of times because they hated the wind. One snorted and kicked the door; another whickered a reply. I made myself stay put, but none of them whinnied again, so I left the shadows and crept across the yard.
Soon, I was on the cinder path that led through the scrubland to the horse pastures. Here, I felt more exposed, with no walls to shield me, and somewhere in the distance I could hear men’s voices. Thick black clouds were moving across the sky, but I knew that behind them the moon was full and might emerge at any moment. I crouched down, trying to locate the guards, straining my eyes until the shapes of trees and bushes began to move about. Finally, I located them, two hundred yards further on. They’d lit a small fire and were gathered round it, their shadows flickering over the coarse grass. I counted three, but then one of them leant forward to throw a log onto the fire and I saw a fourth man behind him. Glimpses of bearded, fire-lit faces under hooded cloaks; they’d be well wrapped up because the temperature was beginning to drop. They’d positioned themselves downwind from the corpse, about as far away as they could get, while still plausibly claiming to be guarding it. I wasn’t so lucky. Already, I’d noticed a slight taint on the air.
The ground ahead of me, my own hands, suddenly became lighter. The wind had blown a hole in the cloud and the moon peered through it—an old moon, haggard, empty of everything but grief. I thought of Hecuba and shivered, but really there was no room in my mind now for anyone except Amina. Where was she? I’d heard no sound, detected no movement—I actually let myself hope the guards’ voices had frightened her away. She’d be on the beach, I thought, walking up and down as I used to do, schooling herself to accept the unacceptable. If I went back that way, I might catch up with her. I started to walk through the dunes, moving swiftly and silently, every few paces crouching down again to make myself less of a target for the wind. Above my head, the blades of marram grass shone silver in the moonlight. I told myself I might just walk quickly past the body, check she wasn’t there, and then slide down the slopes of sand onto the beach and go safely home. But, immediately, I remembered I couldn’t go back that way because the entrance to the compound was guarded and, though the guards would recognize me, it might be a little difficult to explain what I was doing wandering about in the middle of the night. Worry about that later. I dropped to my knees and crawled in the direction of the smell, trying at the same time to hold my mantle over my nose and mouth—a curious, crippled, three-legged crawl through loose sand. I kept stopping, straining to hear the guards, but either the wind was drowning out their voices, or they’d gone quiet. Asleep? Probably. I couldn’t imagine a more boring job.
But then, I did hear a noise: quick, shallow breathing. I thought of all the predatory animals that might be drawn to the body at night. I couldn’t shout to scare whatever it was away because that would attract the attention of the guards, so I had to continue on the path. It was getting lighter; the slope of sand ahead of me gleamed white. Any minute now the grooms, who were always up before dawn, would be taking the horses to pasture. One quick look, I told myself, and then I’d go back home. As I got closer, the breathing became louder, the smell indescribably vile—and then I saw her, a huddled black shape scrabbling away with both hands.
“Amina.”
She spun around, her face sharp with fear, realized it was me and hissed, “Go away.”
I crawled forward. The ground around the body was disturbed—her fingermarks everywhere like the claws of an animal. Forcing myself to look more closely, I saw the body was almost covered, but with one skeletonized arm still exposed. The hand seemed to reach out to me. I remembered that same hand with a silver coin glinting on its palm—only now there was no palm, no flesh left at all. The white bones pleaded with me to be covered up. Without ever making a conscious decision, I found myself scrabbling in the sandy soil, exactly as Amina had b
een doing. We didn’t look at each other—we didn’t speak—but two of us working together got the job done fast. I wiped my hands on my tunic and started to stand up. But then, to my horror, she began saying the prayers for the dead. Light perpetual, rest eternal…“Amina!” I said, struggling to keep my voice down. There seemed to be a blockage in my chest that stopped my breathing—not some irritating little impediment like you sometimes get with a sore throat or a cold—big, like a man’s clenched fist. “Look, you’ve done what you came out to do. We’ve got to go back now.”
She shook her head. “Not till I’ve finished the prayers.”
“You can do that in the hut.” I saw something on the ground on the other side of her, a hunk of bread and a jug of wine, both of them needed to complete the ritual. “You’ve done this once already.”
“No, I didn’t, somebody walked past, I had to stop. I’ve got to do it properly this time.”
“Do you think the gods care? You’ve done enough.”
But she wouldn’t listen. And I couldn’t leave her. So, we knelt there, gabbling the prayers for the dead: a safe crossing, a quiet sea, peace at the last…All the hopes we cling to, as we send those frail vessels out into the dark. I’ve never in my life heard the burial prayers rattled through as fast as we said them that night—and I’ve sat through some perfunctory funerals in my day. When we’d finished, Amina broke off a lump of bread and handed me the jug. The crust was hard, the wine sour—by the time I’d forced it down tears were streaming over my cheeks—and they weren’t tears of grief either. Amina managed to swallow her crust, though she almost choked, and then poured the last of the wine onto the sand as a libation to the gods. The ground was so parched the drops bounced, before puckering the surface and sinking in. I noticed Amina had a red stain at the corner of her mouth and, in noticing that, I became aware of how light it had become.
